The Dwaine Caraway Show

Three weeks after our mad ride, I witness one of those bone-crunching little moments on the city council that ordinarily never generate a word in print or a split-second on the TV news. But it tells me volumes.

I will try to condense the back story. Black concessionaires at DFW Airport are very unhappy with the way the airport hands out locations for their shops. They claim they have been squeezed together into a semi-abandoned "South Dallas" terminal where there is no foot traffic, while white concessionaires have been granted plum relocations in busier terminals. Their leader is Marvin Robinson, a concessionaire, community leader and business executive, revered in the city generally and in the black community in particular.

At its March 5 briefing session, the council is scheduled to vote on an appointment to the airport board. Most of the minority council members have united behind one candidate who has promised to help with the location issue for the concessionaires.

Leppert and the Citizens Council types want another man appointed. Caraway is the swing vote.

Peter Johnson, the state SCLC coordinator, and the Reverend Ronald Wright, president of the Dallas Chapter of the SCLC, tell me Caraway promised them the day before the vote that he will support the candidate favored by the minority community. Other council members, speaking not for attribution, also tell me Caraway signed up with them for this vote.

So he's the swing. He has promised to swing with his own community. But he owes Leppert. The price.

The night before the meeting, when most council members have left their offices, Caraway sends out a memo saying he wants to delay the appointment. Votes have been polled in advance by the interested parties. A delay will play to the advantage of Leppert and the Citizens Council. If the city council does not delay the vote, the candidate favored by the black community will get in.

So Caraway's delay is a move for Leppert. Normally no one would have seen his memo until morning, when it would have been too late to outflank him. But Caraway gets caught. Someone does see it in time. Overnight and early in the morning, calls go out all over town to the major players in the black community, to Hispanic leaders and to concessionaires who wouldn't show up otherwise for the briefing session.

In the morning when Caraway expects an empty peanut gallery and a cakewalk, he faces instead a roomful of accusing eyes. Caraway's request for a delay is voted down. Leppert tries to delay the vote another way but is aced on parliamentary procedure. So now the council must vote on the nomination of the candidate favored by the minority community, and Caraway must swing.

He reads the room. He sees who is here and lurking in the wings. He must make his move. He is unhinged. He makes a long, angry speech in which he seems to be saying that he won't be pushed around, which would mean that he is going to vote for Leppert's guy and defy this roomful of heavy-hitters from his own community.

"I want to say this about today," Caraway says, shaking his head. "I really am somewhat taken aback that I, as a council member, issued a memo asking for a delay, but yet here is the backdrop from that this morning, putting me on the public spot with the press and everything else."

He free-rants. "This should not be carried out in this form, in this fashion, at this time. It shouldn't be. I would have never and I have never bent to pressure."

He slams the butt of a palm against the table. "I don't want to see this type of process ever again, where folk get on telephones at night and gather people just to be on their side, when it should be all about the people and putting the best person there.

"I want you all to know, whoever wins on whichever side it is, I still want nothing from nobody. I am going to remember this process and how it went down."

It's a voice vote. They all have to say out loud how they are voting. Caraway votes in favor of the minority community's nominee for the airport board, which in effect is a vote against Leppert.

After his long rant vowing that he will not bow to the pressure, he folds and votes exactly the way the pressure pushed him. But it's a fold he can survive. Voting with Leppert would have been fatal.

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It seems like a simple thing—telling young men to pull up their pants. Obviously it is not. In this world, you can tell people to pull up their pants and find yourself accused of racial perfidy, homophobia and probably a lot more. And some of those accusations might even be legitimate. Life is complicated.